Silent Hope
October 14th, 2023
In this special edition of The Floofer Zone, I break tradition by talking about a game that ISN'T older than I am!
Silent Hope is an action RPG developed by the marvelous folks over at Marvelous, released for the Nintendo Switch and PC earlier this month. Marvelous is responsible for some other names you might've heard of, such as the Story of Seasons (aka Harvest Moon) and Rune Factory franchises, though you also might recognize the name Silent Hope from a Nintendo Direct from earlier this year!
Silent Hope's story is that of a fable told within the Rune Factory universe: one day, the king of a great kingdom vanished into a dangerous dungeon known as the Abyss, taking the very concept of language down with him. Left without any words, spoken or otherwise, the people of the world of Silent Hope could only communicate via vague grunts and simple gestures
The princess, the only person who could still speak, mourned her father's disappearance and cried a river of tears for 100 years straight, until her magic had solidified them and encased her in a giant crystal. One fateful day, seven rainbow colored lights shot out of the Abyss, and the princess prayed to them with all her might that someone might come help her… and then, by some miracle, seven travelers arrived one by one
Silent Hope is a game that immediately intrigued me, though initially not enough to get me to want to play it. I kinda dismissed it because of how "low budget" it looked, but the premise was cool and they got my interest when they announced that it shares the same setting as Rune Factory. One eShop demo later, and I was set on playing the full game for myself :)
In Silent Hope, you pick one of seven characters to delve into the Abyss to fight monsters, gather loot and materials, and try to find the missing king. The princess's blessing only allows one of the seven heroes to enter the Abyss at any given time, but smaller fragments of the large crystal that holds the princess can be found throughout the dungeon, which you can use to swap characters or exit the Abyss
Swapping characters is encouraged (to an extent, but more on that later) by a system where the leaving character grants a powerful buff to the new one. These buffs can overlap, and they last until you either get knocked out or leave the Abyss voluntarily, so the more you swap, the more powerful you'll become. This creates an interesting risk-reward scenario: you could swap characters to keep going further (you have seven health bars to work with, after all)… but if you die, you lose a not-insignificant amount of all the loot that you worked so hard to gather, so sometimes it's worth it to bail out early
Combat in Silent Hope is decently fast, fluid, and fun. Each character has a basic attack combo (which you can do by holding down the button instead of mashing it, thank you Marvelous) and up to 3 powerful skills that go on a cooldown once you've used them. While the enemy design in Silent Hope often boils down to a very simple game of hit-and-run, the seven fighters each have a fairly distinct playstyle from one another, and their abilities are very satisfying to use if you can land them, so the game never gets repetitive as long as you're frequently swapping out heroes. Combat is also spiced up by the inclusion of environmental hazards (bombs, lava, etc.) that are dangerous to both you and the enemies, meanwhile some heroes have abilities that can shove or pull foes… I'm sure you can see where that’s going
Also, you'll be able to unlock additional skills for your favorite heroes later on, which you can freely mix-and-match with their original set of 3! Skill points that you gain upon leveling up can be used to upgrade any skill you want, so there’s an additional layer of strategy involved when deciding which skill you want to prioritize upgrading first
When you're not doing some dungeon diving, you'll find yourself back at Base Camp, where you can use the materials and runes you've gathered (think of runes as the money in this game) to craft new items and gear for your heroes, or upgrade stuff that you've already crafted. This is where my one big criticism of Silent Hope lies… there's nothing wrong with the actual process of crafting (it's literally all just menus), my issue is with the way the game is balanced
The first "layer" of the Abyss (like a world in a Mario game, basically) is pretty easy, and there's no real pressure to take the crafting and upgrading all that seriously. Later layers amp up the difficulty, and enemies start dishing out much more damage while also becoming much harder to kill. This creates a problem: everything you want to do at Base Camp costs materials & runes, and the game simply doesn't give you enough of them to properly keep all seven characters upgraded and battle-ready. I struggled to craft good weapons for everyone because I was either out of runes, or out of that one super-important material that only drops from one monster… it simply isn't possible to use all seven characters without grinding your soul away for the resources needed to power them up
As a matter of fact, you're not actually intended to use all seven— in the Silent Hope Official World Guide, the Lead Scenario Director for the game, Honoka Moriwaki, says the following: "I'd recommend planning your strategy around at least two or three heroes". Midway through my adventure, I settled on four heroes, and I almost immediately found it much easier to afford everything that I wanted to craft
My one big criticism, then, is that I felt like something was lost when I couldn't use all seven characters anymore. Every character is surprisingly fun to use, and the variety that came from being able to freely swap between play styles in the middle of a dungeon run was pretty cool! It was one of the more unique and fun aspects about the game for me, so I was a little disappointed to lose it
All that being said, my one issue with Silent Hope's balance didn't ruin it for me at all, and after a while I honestly started to have more fun than I did before! The game felt a lot better to play once I wasn't underpowered and underleveled all the time— shocker, I know X3
But while the gameplay of Silent Hope is great, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the story. I’m not going to spoil anything, as I really think the mystery of slowly piecing together what happened to the king is one of the game’s best qualities, but I will say that the colorful and cute nature of the game’s presentation hides a much more tragic and emotional tale than what you might expect, and as a result, the ending hit me a lot harder than I thought it would
Silent Hope’s story is benefited by the fact that the devs clearly put a lot of love and care into making cool lore for their world, even though they knew that the game itself was going to focus mostly on action. Remember the Official World Guide I mentioned earlier? Aside from containing a full strategy guide for the game, Silent Hope’s World Guide reveals details about the setting and a full backstory for each of the seven playable characters that you won’t find in the game itself. This isn’t a case of what Capcom did with Mega Man where they hid the cool stuff away from the player for no good reason— as the website itself puts it:
They didn't need to do any of this, and that's what makes it so cool to me. No one would have complained if Silent Hope's narrative was just set dressing for a game about fighting monsters, but I get the impression that the developers really tried their best within the limitations they had to deliver a story that the player would remember, even after completing the game. Those sorts of action games are always my favorite
I'd also like to mention that the in-game Bestiary contains mysterious flavor text for each monster… it seems almost like the monsters that lurk the Abyss are actually people’s thoughts given form! How did that happen? You’ll have to play the game to find out :)
One last thing before I wrap up this post: the composer for the game, Takahiro Nakaguchi, who as far as I can tell is a first time video game composer, did an absolutely incredible job. My favorite track has to be the theme that plays in the final layer of the Abyss— it has this sense of sorrow to it that perfectly embodies the tone that the story takes in the final act of the game
Silent Hope is a game that really surprised me. I wasn’t even planning on giving it a chance until they revealed the Rune Factory connection, and even while playing I had my concerns about the game (such as the balance issue I mentioned earlier), but once I was done, I came away from the experience thinking to myself: “I love this game”. And isn’t that we all want?
As always, this has been my… review? My review of Silent Hope. I did beat the game, so I guess I can’t call it a first impression anymore lol
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to playing Animal Crossing New Leaf Silent Hope. I won’t give away the specifics, but… let’s just say the game still has some surprises left in store, even after beating the final boss :)
